


Intercession

by Bluerider



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 09:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24348919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluerider/pseuds/Bluerider
Summary: Lena makes new friends.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 26
Kudos: 244





	Intercession

**Author's Note:**

> Resurgence has been hidden while AO3 investigates for malware. Luddite that I am, I'm leaving it to them to sort out so to those who were following it, I am sorry but I have no clue when or if it will be back. 
> 
> In the meantime, I'm fed up with CW. AGAIN. Who isn't, really?

Lena blinked awake. The lights above her were on. They were most certainly _not_ her bedroom lights, which had been off when she fell asleep. Hurriedly she jerked herself into a sitting position,

"Ah, Miss Luthor."

There were two women in the room with her. One was dark haired, the other blonde. They were wearing costumes Lena didn't recognise. However the costumes were definitely of the superhero type. Lena recoiled a little before she collected herself.

"Miss Luthor?" The dark haired one spoke again. "We apologise for essentially kidnapping you and for the alarm you must feel. We mean you no harm. In fact we wish to ask for your help. We did not know if we would be interrupted if we spoke in your apartment, so we brought you here, where we may converse in peace."

"Who are you?"

"Well, nearly everyone knows me as Wonder Woman and her as Captain Marvel. However you may be call me Diana."

"And I'm Carol. Hi." The blonde waved languidly from the counter against the wall. She turned her back for a second, only to turn back round with a full coffeepot. She poured three mugs and set one on the bedside table for Lena.

"What do you want with me?" Both the women began to drink so Lena thought it safe to do the same. It was never good to wake up without coffee. 

"We are about to explain. However before we do, you may wish to use the bathroom through there," Diana gestured at a door. "There are clean clothes there for you."

Lena went. 

In the bathroom, as she performed her morning toilette by rote, she considered her situation. Neither of her ... captors? ... seemed disposed to harm her. She didn't like surprises and worried about what would be happening with LutherCorp in her absence. How long had she slept? She had woken naturally and wasn't terribly hungry so maybe it was more or less her normal wake-up time. She eyed the bathroom. There was enough that was foreign about it to make her believe she wasn't on Earth. For example the taps were recognisably taps but not of any design she had ever seen: a single straight spout with a slider on top for temperature control: she had tried the one at the sink. The towels felt like a microfibre/flannel mix but were satiny and thin, unlike any fabric Lena had ever seen. She took a shower. On the counter was a clean folded plain black jumpsuit. Underwear was in packaging that was papery and fibrous and looked biodegradable. There was no make up but Lena wasn't concerned. She found dental floss and used it, rinsed her mouth, cleaned her face thoroughly. There was a dispenser for little sheets that looked like Listerine tabs. She took one and sniffed it. Minty. She tested it with the tip of her tongue. Yes, exactly like a Listerine tab. She put it in her mouth and let it dissolve. It was less strong than Listerine, but pleasantly refreshing, more tart than sweet. She decided she liked it and checked her reflection in the mirror. The coffee she had brought in with her was cool enough to gulp now and she finished it, rinsed her mouth and took another tab for her tongue, She was ready.

Outside the two women smiled at her and gestured at an empty chair at the table where they were sitting. They were eating what looked like neat little white rectangles and Carol pushed the rack of them closer to Lena while Diana poured more coffee into the empty mug Lena had brought back. Lena took a rectangle and bit into it delicately. It tasted like toast with butter and peach jam. She ate a little more readily.

"We'll take you home if you don't want to help us," Carol said abruptly. "But please hear us out first."

Occupied with eating, Lena simply nodded.

"I'm not from your universe," Carol said. "Where I come from, Earth is much like yours." She spoke with an accent Lena identified as American middle class, possibly with a blue collar background. It wasn't sophisticated but so long as she was clear, Lena really didn't care. She was latching on to the fact that apparently the multiverse had revived.

"I, however, AM from your Earth," Diana put in. "I have not been among you much since the Second World War, though."

"Among _us_?" The Second World War? Lena studied her. Diana in appearance seemed much the same age as Carol, that is, a few years older than Lena herself. Where Carol slouched when relaxed, Diana's posture was effortlessly regal. Her English was slightly American accented but that accent overlaid something that was definitely more European.

"My people call it Man's World. Our home is shrouded from it although it is still on Earth. It is a protected place. We are ... very long lived." 

"Okay, so where are we now?" Lena waved a hand at the room.

"This is my ship. The _Triton_. In space. Sort of."

Lena frowned at Carol for the vagueness. 

"Carol acquired it before we met," Diana interposed. "She left her universe with it, in fact, and then acquired a ... a ..."

"AI," Carol said.

"Supercomputer," Diana said.

"Whatever," Carol shrugged. "Normally I go looking for trouble to solve. But the AI tells me who to look for when there's a problem I can't solve by myself. That's how I found Diana a while ago."

"And after we had worked together, I found Carol's journey a worthy one and decided to accompany her for a while," Diana went on. "The _Triton_ can travel between universes and has some capacity to manage time." 

"Right," Carol picked up again. "Yesterday the AI spit out your name as someone who could help with our current problem. But we realised that you are busy and responsible for many people. We brought you here while you were asleep at dawn, not too long before we figured you'd wake up. And more specifically, 'here' means we are temporarily in time limbo while we explain the problem to you and you decide if you want to help. If you say no, we will return you to your home and it will be the morning after you fell asleep. If you say yes, then we all travel to where the problem is. After we've dealt with it, we have a few options but they may be limited depending on how long it takes. Usually it only takes a few days. If that's all, then we can return you to more or less the same time on your world in your universe as when we took you away. You'll still have aged but a few days is negligible. The difficulty arises if the problem takes longer to solve. You don't want to age a year and then go back to the same day a year ago for you. I mean, technically we could do that but after a long enough time, you might look different and it would be hard to explain. Plus your friends and family won't have aged if we return you to the same time."

She looked apologetic. "We can only manage time to a certain extent. We can't go back and forth in time willy nilly. It's sort of like pre-programming time to run at a different rate for us and for your universe. And that takes a lot of energy and no one can guarantee that our predictions about how long we'll take will be in any way accurate. We also can't stay in this limbo very long. It's supposed to be a neutral mid-point when we're jumping between universes. Biological organisms aren't meant to live here."

"Okay, look, explain the problem and the help you think I can give," Lena said. "For all we know, I may already have the answer and then we'd be done."

"There is a planet with a methane-based civilization," Diana explained. "A large meteor struck a sensitive portion of one of that world's tectonic plates and the resulting instability of the planet's crust is an existential crisis for that civilization. They are not able to help themselves. Their ... technology ... if one can call it that, is not suited to manipulating solid things."

Lena frowned in confusion.

"They're gaseous," Carol said. "We can't really communicate. The AI detected sentience and intelligence in the way that the gas clouds move, collect and disperse. We're not even sure if the gas is a single entity or many. But we do have a way to stabilise the planet's crust. It involves inserting something in one of the volcanoes. Diana and I can do the insertion. But the thing we have to put there - well, we have it in one form but we need you to transform it for us into the right form."

"But why _me_?"

Carol pulled out a tablet and showed her what was on the screen. Lena took a breath. It looked an awful lot like Harun-El.

"This a dangerous and rare substance," Diana said. "We are told that you have experience with it."

Lena winced. "We call it Harun-El. Were you also told that when I work on the cutting edge of science, there are often consequences I didn't predict? Where is your supply of it?"

"In stasis," Carol said. "You can work on it remotely while we keep it in a stasis unit. Once it's in the right form, we can transfer it into a portable stasis unit rigged to collapse. Then Diana and I do the insertion, get safely away and hit the trigger. The stasis field collapses and the planet become stable again and everyone's happy."

"What is the right form for it?"

Carol pulled up another screen. There was a picture and long description. Lena read it. 

"So we need a Harun-El dioxide," she concluded. "I've never made that but I can think of several standard ways to do it. But you're right about it being dangerous. Working safely would take a few days, especially working remotely. How long will it take to get to this planet and do the insertion?"

"Couple of days. We can't emerge wherever we like in any universe. The insertion should take another day at most. So will you do it?" Carol looked anxious. "I don't have the training to work in a lab. Diana can but it's not a special expertise for her."

Lena pondered this. The two women stayed silent and let her think.

The idea of just up and leaving LutherCorp was worrying. Two days travel to the planet. She could work on the Harun-El enroute and if she wasn't done when they got there, they would have to wait there until she was. A day for the insertion and then two days travel back. Five days minimum, which was a lot of time to be away if they didn't use the time differential - and Lena didn't want to use it because she didn't how how long she would take to make the Harun-El dioxide. She didn't want to mess with time at all. The very idea gave her a headache.

On the other hand, she was extremely glad of the opportunity to be away from National City for a while. After Leviathan had been defeated, Lena had been genuinely relieved to be on civil terms with Kara again. She had also taken time with Andrea to solidify where they stood with each other without Leviathan tearing Andrea's loyalties in two. 

Andrea was uncomplicated. While Lena still deeply disapproved of her taking the medallion all those years ago on Earth-38, the fact remained that at that time, Lena would never, ever have been of the mindset to kill Lex, and in reality, he had subsequently proven himself effectively dangerous and malignant even while apparently incarcerated. Had Andrea given her the medallion, Lena was sure that she would never have enacted a containment on Lex that would have worked because at that stage she had simply never imagined the extremity of his obsessive madness. She would have tried to stop him and Lex would have at best been temporarily stopped, but a twenty year old younger sister who loved him and a world that had not experienced his red sun rampage and psychopathy could not have stripped him of his position at Luthercorp. He would simply have prosecuted some greater, more dangerous plan later and perhaps, if she had stopped him once, he would have taken care of Lena permanently before she ever thought of living in National City. So in the end the consequences of Andrea taking the medallion had not been as dire as Lena had thought for years. Moreover a daughter's devotion to her father was understandable. Thus, with Leviathan gone, Lena had seen no obstacle to reuniting properly with her old schoolmate and fellow businesswoman. They had history and a lot in common. After they had spoken, Andrea had taken off to search for her father and Lena had wished her success in that endeavour. None of that disturbed her peace of mind.

Kara was a different matter. At the time of the endgame with Leviathan, Lena had been operating on expedience. She was fully cognisant now of what she had done wrong and was heartily ashamed that she had done any of it. She had accepted Kara's criticism that the wrongs she had perpetrated against Kara had been aggressive and unnecessary. At the time, she had not been in any mood to argue. She wanted to help defeat Lex and Leviathan and she had been right to have been in a hurry. Leviathan had been stopped only just in time. 

She had stayed for a little while for a somewhat mournful 'celebratory' dinner at J'onn's office in honour of Brainy, but before long, memories of her last bitter game night there had prompted a nagging discomfort and discontent. She left early, pleading exhaustion. As she made her way home, she was conscious of a low-key resentment still roiling in her breast, but she had been too overwrought to examine it properly. She had gone to bed immediately and woken up here. And she really wanted time to figure out that resentment before it boiled up into something dangerous again. Working on this project with these two pleasant seeming strangers would let her mind lie fallow on the subject of Kara for a little while. She could come back to it fresh afterwards and then maybe the reasons for her discontent with the way things lay would emerge. Yet ... there was still Lex on the loose. He could do a LOT in five days. 

She looked up at Carol and Diana. "I will help you but I need to go home first for a little while. I have to leave notice of my absence and instructions for the management of my business. I don't want you skewing time around for me. But that means we can't be gone too long because I have other unfinished business I cannot delegate."

///

At home, Lena wrote a long email for her assistant, taking a leave of absence for a week and detailing what she needed done. She set out a message for her assistant to give to Kara about her being called away on urgent business and then packed. Finally she nodded at Carol and then they were back on the _Triton_.

Diana showed her to a cabin assigned to her and then took her on a little tour while Carol went off to do pilot-y things. When the lights dimmed, Diana got them both harnessed into chairs on the flight deck just behind a very professional looking Carol and they all solemnly started sucking on peppermints. A weird wave of nausea-inducing vertigo happened. The dark viewscreen went a little crazy with jagged lines of all colours that wiggled about and decidedly did NOT help the vertigo, Lena looked away from the viewscreen, gritted her teeth, then sucked harder on her peppermint. They arrived at the limbo point for a minute of calm and then the vertigo started again. 

Lena was so relieved when it came to an end. She had very nearly tossed her cookies. 

"Come and have some ginger tea," Diana advised. "It's nice and it will help to steady your stomach. Then you can start work."

///

It took four days, the _Triton_ maintaining station keeping in orbit over the planet for the last two. The insertion was in Lena's opinion quite insane. Carol got Diana into a spacesuit and Diana cradled the stasis unit holding the Harun-El dioxide in her arms. Carol picked Diana up and then simply stepped out the airlock and flew towards the planet's atmosphere _through space_. Left alone on the ship, Lena monitored the action as shown through the headcam on Diana's spacesuit. At first things went by too fast for Lena to see anything while Carol flew. Then Carol set Diana down on the lip of the designated volcano and the picture steadied, but only a little. There seemed to be ground tremors. Lena watched as Carol fastened a line to a harness on Diana's back and then Diana started climbing down _into_ the damned volcano. Why didn't Carol go alone and just fly down into the volcano herself?

On the monitor, Diana's hands unfastened a golden rope from around her waist and then whirled it in a lasso. The loop caught round an outcropping of rock and an astonished Lena observed the entire rock surface visible on the monitor suddenly disappear. in its place there appeared a small cavern filled with a reddish clouds. Were these the manifestation of sentience the ship's AI had detected? Diana didn't hang around for sightseeing or introductions. It had to be fiercely hot and even a demigod was not complete proof against that kind of heat. The monitor showed her advancing deeper and deeper into the cavern until she reached an otherwise unremarkable niche in the cavern wall, into which she wedged the stasis unit. She made her way back out of the cavern, refastened the golden rope around her waist and then began ascending quickly, possibly assisted by Carol pulling on the line. 

Half an hour later, both women were back in jumpsuits and sipping tea in the main cabin. Carol hit the button for the stasis field to collapse. They stayed there long enough to observe the gradual lessening of the tremors on the planet's surface. 

"I guess we're done," Carol said. She gave Lena a wry smile. "Saving a civilization isn't always battle and glory. It can be a thankless task, I'm afraid. But if it means anything, Diana and I are grateful to you."

Lena smiled. "It means a lot. And I do admire your dedication. Unfortunately, I have other things to which I am already dedicated."

"Right you are." Carol heaved herself up. "I'll get us under way."

///

It took a hour or so for Lena to settle down but once she had, she found she had no immediate task at hand. Diana was quietly reading something and Carol was still on the flight deck. 

She cleared her throat. Diana looked up.

"Are you planning to stay long away from our Earth?"

Diana shrugged. "It is nice to be here and be useful. The days are varied because the trouble we come across is manifold in nature. On our Earth, Man's World is ... " she sighed, " ...tiresome. I much prefer it at home but there is little there to occupy me. It was stress-free but I did not feel useful." 

Lena nodded her understanding. 

Diana gave her a long look. "You know, this is not the first time the supercomputer has given us your name."

"It's not?" That was really astounding with what was a multiverse search engine - correction, a multiverse _snoop_ engine.

Diana shook her head. "On at least three separate occasions before this, your name has appeared on the list of individuals who could help us. It was not at the top of the list before so we sought whoever _was_ at the top. This time yours was the only name provided so we came to you. Carol and I discussed asking you to work with us on a more regular basis. It would save us going all over the place looking for help each time. We are not scientists like you. I have some training in it but it is not my natural bent, and Carol's science is more concerned with physics, astrophysics and aeronautics. You are also an engineer and the ship ... could sometimes use one." She shrugged. "But as you have said, you have your own responsibilities already."

Lena leaned back in her chair. "And I also have unfinished business at home," she said slowly. "It may take some time. After that, well ... I run a corporation. Other people have the skills required. I can be replaced in that role."

Diana cocked her head. "You would not find it suffocating with just the two of us for company on this small ship?"

"How do _you_ deal with it?"

"Carol and I get on well. On each adventure, we usually meet new people outside the ship, like you this time. And we take breaks. Carol visits her home world in her universe and I go home. We are not just out here cruising along for months at a time. She gets an alert from the AI if there is a problem that needs solving and then she comes to collect me."

"Well," Lena huffed, "I am used to solitude. I would not be a great loss to the society of National City. At best, I am a controversial figure. A lot of people would be glad if I weren't around."

Diana frowned at her and opened her mouth, then closed it again. After some thought, she ventured, "The supercomputer gave us a short outline on you. Is this about your family?"

"Ultimately yes. But it's also partly because of my personality. Luthors don't do kumbaya." Lena issued a thin smile.

Diana looked vaguely puzzled by that for a second, then she seemed to divine Lena's meaning as her face cleared. She said, "You have not been cheerful. I have noticed. Yet you have a sense of humour with Carol and me. We have found your company pleasant. So I have concluded that there is something troubling you. I do not believe you are naturally despondent."

Lena chuckled. "Usually I'm too focussed on a goal to be despondent."

Diana looked at her measuringly. "You need not speak of what troubles you. I only point it out so you know I am aware of it and wiling to listen. After all, who can I tell?"

"I've liked being here with both of you very much," Lena said, "so I truly mean no offence when I say that I am unaccustomed to confiding in people I don't know very well. Luthors, in fact, rarely confide in anyone and the last time I did ... let's just say it did not turn out so well."

"Ah, is _that_ what troubles you?"

"Persistent, aren't you?" Lena gave a brief smile. "Diana, I don't know what your AI's told you, but I am not a hero. I am not even a very good person. It's probably a good thing for you both NOT to make me any offers."

Carol spoke from the doorway. "From where I stand, I see someone who helped us without asking for anything in return. You were content to do something objectively good even though our success brought nothing, not even thanks. That does not sound like a bad person to me."

Lena shrugged, "Well, I'm not angry or disappointed in either of you. When I am, I can be angry to the point of being dangerous. I should really come with a health warning and a disclaimer."

Diana smiled. "The longer you associate with someone, the likelier it is that you will discover something about them that you find disagreeable. Strangers always put their best foot forward with each other and they continue to do so until the acquaintance is well enough established. We three have lived in close quarters for several days but you have been fine. Even comfortable, I dare say."

Lena blinked. "Why not? You two are great and you've been very nice to me."

"Our last consultant," Carol said reminiscently, "was a snob and didn't like me. My manners were too plebeian for him. The one before that was a sleaze and we had to keep shutting him down. And the one before _that_ was a woman who felt uncomfortable because, according to her, we were both 'so perfect'! Believe me, it's quite easy to find someone disagreeable in less than three days. My point is, you're easygoing and not snooty for all that you came from wealth and are a bit of a perfectionist. You are considerate and you share the load as far as you can without having to be asked."

"That shows generosity of spirit," Diana agreed. "So I do not know why you think you are not a good person."

"I've done some very bad things," Lena sighed. 

"So have I," Carol said. "And hey, look at us now, it's a whole new day and we get to make new decisions to do good things!"

Lena really smiled. These two women were a tonic.

"What is this unfinished business you have?" Diana asked inquisitively.

"My brother is an evil asshole and he is planning something terrible," Lena told her sourly. "We have to stop him. I have to help. I know him better than anyone."

"When you say 'something terrible' ..." Carol drawled.

"He is totally, pathologically anti-alien. He wants to rid Earth of all aliens, no matter how good or bad they objectively are and he does not care how many humans die in the process. Unfortunately he is also brilliant. He's killed many humans and aliens and he is probably aided by my adoptive mother, who in the past led a group that experimented on aliens in horrible ways. They are both incapable of sympathy or empathy."

Carol winced. "Sociopaths or psychopaths then."

"Pretty much," Lena agreed. 

"So it is a big problem for you." Diana looked at Carol. "Is it a big enough problem for us?"

Carol's gaze hit Lena arrow straight. "Do you _want_ us to help?"

"Yes," Lena said without hesitation. Not having to rely exclusively on Kara and her friends came as a relief. 

"Then give us the rundown," Carol said.

So Lena did.

///

They cornered her again shortly before they arrived at the jump point. 

"Lena, you have spoken very carefully about Supergirl. It was obvious. You have said nothing critical of her. All you have told us is that you had a serious disagreement with her and it soured relations between you, a situation your brother took advantage of," Diana began carefully. "You have now achieved a measure of peace with her but clearly you have reservations."

Lena clenched her fists on the table.

"Hey," Carol said, "we won't pry if you don't want us to. But it's obviously preoccupying you and we are fresh eyes. Why not take advantage of that?"

Lena had had time to think. After retelling history to them earlier, she had a renewed perspective. "What you do think of secret government organisations?"

Diana did her little head cock. "Do you mean the organisation is known to exist but its operations are secret? Or that even the existence of the organisation is secret?"

"The latter."

Diana looked disapproving. "It is not democratic."

"What she said," Carol agreed.

"That's what I think too. Fortunately it no longer exists. But I mention it because it has a lot to do with the disagreement between Supergirl and myself. This is how it began."

Both her companions concentrated with keen interest as Lena told them about Reign, the synthetic kryptonite and Supergirl's blowup about that.

Carol blinked. "But you made it to save her! And your friend Sam too, of course. They should have been grateful."

"No good deed goes unpunished," Lena said bitterly. 

Diana looked disapproving again. "That was ungrateful and ungracious."

Comforted by their support, Lena went on, "So ... I have two separate issues with this. The first was that Supergirl has a civilian identity. She passes as human and holds down a job. And in that guise, though I did not then know it to be such, she was my friend. And as my friend, she dealt with me at the time completely differently from when she was with me as Supergirl."

Carol grimaced. "That was a dick move. Undercover agents may have families but their families only know them when they're _not_ undercover. If someone only knows and deals with one of your personas then really there is no need to reveal yourself. It's a judgment call if they're close enough that they might reasonably feel they deserve to know but it is still your secret and the more people you tell, the greater the chances are that the secret will be revealed to the world at large, especially if the people you tell are not themselves trained to keep secrets. They could give you away accidentally. So at most they are allowed to be hurt. But in this case she was double dealing. That deserves some mad as well as some hurt."

"The second issue," Lena went more warmly, "is that at the time the secret organisation I was telling you about, the Department of Extra-Normal Operations, existed and Supergirl worked with them. Its mission was to avert danger that involved aliens. Sometimes that meant apprehending aliens who were dangerous. I never read about any of those going to trial. Because the organisation was secret, it acted extra-judicially. As far as the public was concerned, it was not accountable, though it answered to people higher up in the government. But that also meant that they acted against humans who were somehow connected to incidents involving aliens - that part of their jurisdiction was very loose. They had IDs that presented them to the public as FBI or the Secret Service but they weren't actually part of either of those organisations. And really, after an incident when my mother tried to poison all aliens in National City with a chemical rain, everyone knew aliens other than Superman and Supergirl existed on Earth. So what was the point of keeping the DEO a secret after that? There was no longer a public to alarm with knowledge that aliens were among us. On the contrary, it would have been _reassuring_ to the public to know that we had people with the skills and equipment to handle dangerous aliens. So the secrecy could only have been retained to keep the DEO's ability to execute covert extra-judicial action. What it meant for me was that when they discovered I was trying to cure Sam in secret, they hauled me in for questioning. All of them, Supergirl and her friends, against me. And when I made the kryptonite, though Supergirl's reaction was as unreasonable as you say, they backed her up unquestioningly. Her human adoptive sister was a senior agent. Which means Supergirl sicced the DEO on me. An organisation that could make me disappear. For doing something that was clearly intended for everyone's benefit."

Carol and Diana both looked grim.

"So here's the thing. From that point on, the DEO was lurking in the background as a constant implied threat to me. I worked with them partly out of gratitude because they and Supergirl had saved my life and reputation in the past and partly because I wanted to save innocent people. But there was never a moment that I was unaware that they would act against me in an instant if they thought I was an active threat, however wrongly, however unreasonably. Because it _had already happened._ In those days, my friend was my respite from the constant pressure. I tried to see her mostly alone, away from her friends and her sister, the DEO connections, but she was so persistent about inviting me over for family occasions that beyond a certain point, it was just awkward to refuse. I liked her immensely, everyone else not so much, but she insisted. So when I discovered that she was Supergirl..."

Carol hissed. Diana shook her head.

Lena looked at her hands. "I'd been under siege in the Luthor household since I was four. In National City I was still under siege every day because of what Lillian and Lex had done and continued to do. I most certainly didn't want to spend the little personal time I had walking a knife edge and worrying every moment that any well-intentioned thing I might do or say might be taken the wrong way and trigger another unpredictably unreasonable reaction and get me disappeared. That ... that's understandable, isn't it?" She blinked uncertainly.

"Of course," Diana agreed. "Someone who was so unreasonable once might be so again, even if most of the time she is not. Once would be enough with such serious and possibly final consequences. You would have no advocate if you were disappeared."

"And Supergirl is very close to her sister. Hurt her and she goes and cries on her sister's shoulder. And her sister is rabidly protective and well trained. But hey, it's all nice and cozy on sister night. It's not like snitching to the Gestapo over a metal desk at an army barracks, is it?" Lena concluded bitterly. "Just because Supergirl would never apply the terror herself but got other people to do it didn't make me _less_ terrorized! I just ..." she clenched her jaw defiantly, " ... refused to _act_ terrorized."

"So this is what's been troubling you?" Diana frowned. "The story does not seem complete. You said recently you resolved things somewhat."

"Yes, because I didn't have much time to think. She told me when she revealed herself to me that the reason for the continued deception had ceased to be my protection and had been about having someone else she could be her civilian self with, who didn't expect her to solve the problems of the world with superpowers. But last week she said that she had made a single mistake and it was all to protect me! I accepted that I was at fault because I had in fact done very bad things. I had deceived her into believing I was reconciled to her dual identities for weeks. Then I trapped her in kryptonite. I very nearly was unable to stop kryptonite cannons that were protecting me from shooting her down. I was attempting to manipulate the human psyche. I was wrong to do all of that and so when we spoke a few days ago, I accepted the fault for that because it was right to and because it wasn't the time to argue when we were facing a great and immediate danger. I was right to take that appeasing line because it did require us all together to defeat Leviathan and even then we may have lost one of us ..." Lena gave her head a quick shake to clear it so she could stay on point. "Anyway, it was only afterwards that I realised that I wasn't content with the way that it ended, that there were things on my side of the balance that hadn't been taken into account. And the last thing I've only just realised, although it's been true all along, is this."

Carol and Diana leaned forward in anticipation.

Lena sighed. "Supergirl needs absolute and indefeasible security in a way that humans do not. Well, she's got that now, relative to me. In every way. Physically goes without saying. Mentally and emotionally because I revealed things to my friend about myself I never would have had I known she was Supergirl and I know nothing about her that isn't connected to her day job. Numerically, because pretty much everyone would pick her over me however unreasonable she might be. And therefore she gets moral superiority too. Or at least the moral majority, which seems to her to amount to the same thing. And with this overwhelming imbalance of power in every single aspect, she expects _friendship_ to be feasible?"

She ground her teeth. "I'm like a pet she goes to visit in her backyard to play with whenever she wants to feel human. I bare my teeth to protect her because I see a lynx in a tree about to pounce on her and because the teeth are dangerous to her, she _fucking_ put a DEO leash on me! And now the DEO is no more, her sister and de facto father figure are even less accountable and _he's_ a shapeshifter with psychic abilities! I am grateful to her for everything she's done for me. For that reason I will always help her if there is danger. But gratitude should NOT mean she gets to screw me over and then just apologise and cry and expect me to be OK with that! I deserve better than to be treated like that!"

She became aware that that last sentence came out sounding pathetic, like she was trying to convince herself that she deserved better. She stopped talking and screwed her eyes shut. The memory of Kara's initial stony reception and then her smugness when Lena had apologised, as if Kara believed she herself had nothing else to apologise for, raked at her like glass shards in her mind.

Diana leaned back. "So what will you do?"

"I don't know." Lena gripped the fingers of one hand tightly with the other. "But I can't be the friend she wants. The conditions under which friendship is even possible don't exist because she can't allow them to exist and everyone supports her on that. I don't have it in me to pretend like that for long. And once I tell her that, she will no doubt go cry on her sister's shoulder again! And yes, her sister is an adult she can't, WON'T control. But she knows her sister better than anyone. She knows what she's like. So if she points her in my direction, is she completely absolved of responsibility for what her sister might do? I'm still a passive threat because from their perspective, I can reveal Supergirl's civilian identity anytime I like. Because I've confirmed with my actions that my personal integrity is doubtful."

They sat in silence for a while.

Then Carol said, "Once your brother's taken care once and for all, you should re-think working with us."

Diana chimed in. "And you should give serious consideration to letting Carol and I condition and train you." She gave Lena a pointed gaze. " _Mens sana in corpore sane._ "

"Maybe." Lena said. "For the immediate future, I shall implement other ways to defend myself."

Diana thought for a while more. "You know, the problem here is really that Supergirl sounds like a child when it comes to her emotions. When she felt fear about the kryptonite she just reacted and then could not see that she was being unreasonable, partly because all of her supporters took the same view as she did: that is the moral majority you spoke of, yes? But from the time of Socrates, it has been taught that just because many people think the same way about something does not make them right. So she relied on the number of her supporters to continue feeling that she was right, not on principle. That is what you meant by mistaking the moral majority for moral superiority, is it not? It is easy. It is also childish."

"There's even a sting in the tail," Lena muttered. "She shook my hand and called a truce. It was only later that I discovered that she did that _after_ she'd got someone to check my vault to ensure that I had no more kryptonite. Look, if I were terrified of something, I would take extraordinary measures too. So I can understand that she got my vault checked. It's hurtful but I _can understand that_. It's the whole shaking my hand thing that really upset me because why bother? If she said straight out that she needed my vault checked for more kryptonite I would have let her look in it. I didn't _have_ any more and I had no plans to make any more. In that respect I had nothing to hide. But to _shake my hand_ and pretend she trusted me when plainly she did not: how is that not a deception, or hypocrisy? Once I discovered that, I knew the trust was gone but she wasn't acknowledging it to my face. And that was _after_ I asked her if she really believed that I would harm her. Did I get 'no, Lena of course not, you're not your family. You've proven yourself', which was what she'd been saying to me for years? No! I get her sister saying 'Kryptonite is personal' and Supergirl just staying silent like her sister had scored a point!"

"They sound very close," Carol observed.

"They are," Lena said gloomily, "It's ... odd to me. Even if Lex were the best big brother ever and we were close, I wouldn't be crying on his shoulder over every little thing. I wouldn't expect either of us to confide in each other about everything. We're _adults._ We'd be supportive, not live in each other's pockets. I mean, Supergirl is even stronger than Superman. And yet she found it necessary to be at the beck and callof the DEO. Superman functions independently. And sure, he isn't as skilled as she is and he's a bit too careless about property and collateral damage but he's also dealt with very serious threats all on his own and he began doing that much younger than Supergirl was when she first appeared on the scene. She could have done so much better with decent unbiased advice and a decent tech handler. Her sister could have trained her without the implication that therefore she had to work for the DEO. But Supergirl let herself be led by the nose to work with the very organisation that held aliens without trial indefinitely, despite Superman being right there as an example that she didn't have to! I don't even know what's happened to all the DEO's prisoners now it's been destroyed." She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. "I think you're right. I need to take steps for succession planning in my corporation so I can step back. Maybe make home base Metropolis again, where Sam and Ruby are. Andrea's the only friend I really have in National City, no matter what Supergirl's self-delusions tell her."

///

And so they went to National City. Diana and Carol took up the spare rooms in Lena's apartment. It was nice. She had company. She didn't have to worry about either of them. They hadn't stinted on their hospitality with her so when Lena stuck a wad of cash under her kitchen knife block and said it was for food and sundries including clothes and anything else they needed, they took it as simple good sense not to object. They took a day to explore the city and outfit themselves to fit in while Lena caught up on LuthorCorp business and got started with her security and succession planning.

Then Lena invited Supergirl and her friends over to meet them. It was a little bit evil in that the Supergirl contingent could hardly object. Like any adult citizen Lena was free to recruit whoever she liked to help her with her problems and right now, Lex was her problem. They could hardly claim ownership of that when Lex posed such a great danger to everyone. Lena hadn't revealed Kara's identity to them - she told Kara to come as Supergirl. 

"Diana and Carol have agreed to help me deal with Lex," Lena told them blandly. "They're staying here with me." She saw the exchange of glances among Supergirl and her friends and blithely pretended not to.

"O....kay ... how will they help?" Supergirl asked guardedly.

Lena shrugged. "They're good in a fight and they're smart and versatile. And of course they're helping _me_. _You_ don't have to rely on them in any way. I just thought it would be good for us all to meet each other." She was certainly not going to leave them with any impression that she was seeking their approval.

"How ... er ... did you meet?" Alex was just as guarded as Kara.

"We've spent the last week working closely together," Carol said. "It went very well. We like working with Lena. She gets things done. So do we."

"Good in a fight?" J'onn said doubtfully. He gazed suspiciously at the odd mechanism on Carol's left forearm.

Carol and Diana looked at each other. Then Carol touched her forearm controls and Diana whirled and in the next second, they were in their superhero guises.

Lena coughed politely. "Everyone, meet Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman."

"Oh wow!" Supergirl gazed at Wonder Woman in awe. "I've heard of you from my cousin. You've worked with him and Batman!"

"I have," Diana nodded.

"And who're you?" NIa addressed Captain Marvel with fascination. "Do you have powers?" 

"She has many years of military training and is an accomplished pilot," Lena said. "Everything else is up to her to tell you if and when she wants to." Her voice was a little tart because it stung that all it took was a couple of costumes to make all of them so accepting all of a sudden. Why was it so easy for others and so hard for herself to be accepted? It was NOT being accepted despite everything she had done to help that had caused her to walk down the wrong path in the first place. Carol and Diana would each form their own relationships with the others, come to their own views about them. Lena had to trust them to do that. But were Supergirl and her friends going to win them over and leave Lena on the periphery yet again? She could just see it happening.

As if sensing her thoughts, Carol and Diana drew a little closer. It was such a small thing but that indication of t _heir_ acceptance and loyalty made Lena feel better. Yes, it was petty but then she was only human.

"As Lena said, we offered to help _her_ and she accepted," Diana's voice was calm but firm, drawing boundaries without being explicit.

"Anyway, with Lex now in hiding," Carol folded her arms, "we need to find out what he's planning and stop him. We also need to apprehend him, which means locating him. That is incidental but still a priority because if we don't catch him, he will never stop, from what I've heard. What resources does he have, Lena?"

"Money and loyal supporters," Lena said grimly. "He always has those. And his relationship with our mother is ... not what it once was but it's still possible that they are in contact and she is assisting him. And _she_ is not in hiding, but you can bet that she won't willingly act against him."

"Then questioning her, however aggressively, will bring no helpful results," Carol continued thoughtfully. "We must discover what she knows discreetly. Can we plant a bug on her?"

///

Supergirl hovered high up but it had been pretty boring watching and listening to Lillian shopping in boutiques for hours. J'onn had phased into Lillian's home and office, leaving bugs behind, but when she was on the move, only Supergirl could reliably keep a watch on her and remain undiscovered if Lillian wanted to be alone. So Supergirl occupied herself by thinking of Lena.

Kara didn't know what to make of her relationship with Lena now. Yes, it seemed that Lena was once more firmly on the path of good so that worry was gone. But any thought that their friendship could just pick up where it had left off seemed farfetched. Lena was as willing to help and as protective as she had ever been. She had even gifted the anti-kryptonite suit to Kara. But she had been very busy at LutherCorp too, which left her with hardly any personal time. She was working full days and most evenings either on LutherCorp business or stopping Lex business. But every time Kara tried to suss out when Lena might be free to spend 'friend' time with her, Lena had a very good reason for not being available. Each time Kara hovered above LuthorCorp and used her vision and hearing to see if Lena might be free, Lena was on the phone, or in a conference or typing away in concentrated fashion on her computer. She was refusing press interviews for the moment because of her schedule. Apparently Carol and Diana barely saw her and they were living with her. They didn't seem concerned by this beyond making sure that Lena got enough food and sleep but Kara _was_ concerned and and a little jealous because that had once been her role and now it hadn't been for over a year. Lena had had one lunch with Andrea and a few skype sessions with Sam but other than that, everything pointed to her being fully occupied with work and not simply making excuses.

So okay, she had used to make time for Kara but in those days on Earth-38, she hadn't also had a side project that was as time consuming as looking for Lex or making sure they had equipment to handle whatever he might throw at them. And whenever she _was_ around, Lena was focussed and courteous and kind. But it wasn't as personal as Kara wanted. She didn't make fondly reminiscent references to the past anymore and after Kara had shut her down that one time when they were going after Leviathan, Kara could hardly blame her. Kara thought that she had been just but maybe she had also been a bit brutal. So she had tried to make up for it. One evening when Lena was re-doing J'onn's computer safety protocols, Kara had ventured a remark how it was so good to be working together again. All she got a goodnatured smile and a distracted 'Mmm ...'. Kara had persisted. Lena didn't shut _her_ down but she had been unenthusiastic and contributed nothing to encourage the conversation along those lines. Or when Lena brought pizza and potstickers, she offered them with a smile that said she knew they would be welcome but there would be no teasing remark about knowing they were Kara's favourites - or indeed any friendly teasing at all. 

Lena was drawing lines in the sand Kara didn't understand and it was weighing on her heart. It was as if they were very amicable professional colleagues but no more, and Kara couldn't question that right now because Lena would have good reason to say she was simply busy. Once they caught Lex, then if things continued this way, Kara would have something to point at to pin Lena down. IF they continued this way. But Kara thought they _would_ continue this way. She had a heavy conviction in her stomach that something was wrong. Not something catastrophic in a 'Lena's going Luthor on my ass' way but something horribly important in a 'we'll never be really close again' way. And she guessed that Lena thought she had a very good reason for that, a reason for which Kara was responsible. She didn't really want to have that conversation but if they didn't have it, Kara would have no opportunity to argue that she wasn't at fault. Also, and this was why she was reluctant to have that conversation, Lena always had a reason for what she did. It might not always be good or right reason, but it very often was. And if Lena had a good and right reason this time, then it meant that Kara _was_ at fault and that was a hard thing to think about herself, especially after everything that had happened, after Lena had finally apologised sincerely and Kara had thought they would now be on the right track together. Instead Lena was treading a path wasn't bad but also wasn't Kara's path. It was confusing and upsetting, all the more because Kara ostensibly had no reason to _be_ upset. Even Alex thought Lena was genuinely busy and that Kara should just give her time to settle down.

///

In time, Lillian did unknowingly give them a lead on Lex and they pursued it relentlessly. With him having possession of seemingly unending supplies of kryptonite, at least part of which could have been nabbled by Rama Khan when he destroyed the DEO, Carol, Diana, J'onn and Alex had been instrumental in the final takedown of him and his associates just in time before he once again tried to seed the Earth's atmosphere with kryptonite, which would have forced Kara to stay in her anti-kryptonite suit all the time and effectively ended the existence of Kara Danvers, reporter. He had made stores of kryptonite missiles to shoot her with thereafter, which Alex and J'onn gladly took away and disposed of. Lena had not tried to contact Lex or Lillian on her own and made no attempt to get near any of the kryptonite, still less keep it. She just tightened her lips and went right on with hacking into Lex's security system to avert the dangers it might pose to the takedown team.

With a ruthlessness that Kara was for once only glad of, all of them agreed that J'onn should mindwipe Lex to a state barely beyond adolescence and then he was installed on one of the Luthor family properties with minders that Lena paid for. Knowledge of anything to do with aliens was cleaned out of his brain and then he was left to his own devices. J'onn would, as a friend of Lena's, present himself once every few months to check what was on his mind. Lena cancelled all his business and bank accounts and set up a single one for him to draw on, with an alert in place to inform her of any unusually frequent or large withdrawals. Lena, in her darkest part of her heart, wished that he had made it impossible for the takedown team to do anything other than kill him but this was the best that she thought could be done for now.

They kept the bugs on Lillian and Alex listened to them periodically but Supergirl stopped following her around. Life went back to normal.

///

Kara let a few days go by before asking to see Lena alone at home. She figured that Lena was more likely to be forthcoming on home ground, especially since Carol and Diana would be around at some point to provide support.

"Lena, I just wanted to check in with you that we're good. We haven't been able to reconnect properly but now that Lex is taken care of, I thought maybe we could have some friend time," Kara started hopefully.

Lena gazed into her coffee meditatively. "Kara, I don't believe that we have truly been friends since Reign," she admitted.

"What?!" Kara was utterly shocked and dismayed.

Lena sighed. "First things first. You said at the Pulitzer ceremony that keeping your secret had stopped being about protecting me. That would have made no sense anyway because just knowing something usually doesn't bring danger. It's what one does with that knowledge, in this case being involved in your extra-curricular activities, or other people knowing one has the knowledge, that brings danger. And given that I _was_ involved in your extra-curricular activities already, it would actually have been safer for me to know. How many times have I been greater danger _because_ you kept that secret from me? How many times could I have called on you had I but known who you were? I could have been injured, maybe seriously, maybe fatally, trying to move around a sabotaged plane back from Kasnia that was behaving erratically, for example. Be that as it may, however, you said that in latter days you weren't keeping the secret to protect me anymore but to have someone with whom you could just be Kara Danvers. But then when we took down Leviathan you said you had made only one mistake and that it was in order to protect me. So I'm confused and I think it's reasonable to be."

She looked Kara steadily and Kara ... Kara had no answer. Because it was true. She had contradicted herself. Taken the easy, self-righteous way in that conversation in Lena's lab to make it seem that Lena was overwhelmingly in the wrong.

"Diana once said in an unrelated context that it is a bitter thing to find no justice with those who one considers friends," Lena went on. They had been talking about Carol discovering her previous colleagues and friends were anything but when Diana had made that remark. "And Kara, I'm not going to pretend to you that that sat well with me once Leviathan was dealt with and I had time to think about it. I did many things that I should not have. I accept that. But I did them because you created the state of mind I was in."

"I apologised over and over!" Kara protested.

"Do you know why it was ineffective? What were you apologising _for_?" Wearily, Lena leaned back and rested her head on the back of her couch. "You used me like a toy to play with whenever you wanted to feel human and the worst you can say is that it was _selfish_? You thought that was _appeasing_? Try using, violating, demeaning, completely lacking in respect! You used the DEO to terrorise me. You called me a Luthor after years of both Kara Danvers and Supergirl saying I was not like my family. For making kryptonite to _help ... you ... out!_ Then you shook my hand and lied that you trusted me when you only did that after you secretly had my vault checked first. I don't care that you wanted the vault checked. I care that you lied! Why did you maintain the appearance of trusting me when you, at the end of the day, did not, no matter how many times I helped you in the past and asked nothing in return? Do you truly wonder, with the DEO hanging over me all ready to throw me in a cell on your say so, no matter how unreasonable, that I lived in fear of whatever tantrum Supergirl might next choose to throw? Do you wonder that when Kara Danvers, my only respite from that fear, turned out to be the one who caused that fear, the very one whose temper I could not trust, Kara Danvers who I was already beginning to think associated with me more for the stories she could publish than for my friendship ... do you wonder that I felt utterly vulnerable and beset on all sides? Is it too much to hope that after your reception of _my_ first overtures, you might have even the beginnings of an understanding as to why I was so unreceptive to yours?"

Kara stared at her own lap, unable to respond.

"Trust?" Lena snorted. "I never once did anything to make you think I would harm the Kara Danvers I thought was human. Before Lex revealed the truth I hadn't done anything to harm Supergirl no matter how unjust I thought her treatment of me to be. You on other hand, could always have harmed me so easily and in so many ways. But the moment _I_ did something that could adversely affect Supergirl, you couldn't bear it even though I plainly did it to help you! You didn't tell me who you were because you thought that instead of treating you like Kara Danvers, I would treat you like Supergirl. And what would have been so terrible about that? Of course, it's because while it's apparently necessary for your sense of security for everyone else to rely only on your conscience to stop you from harming them, it was totally unacceptable for you to rely on MY conscience to stop me from harming you even when I had absolutely no reason to want to! You want to deny distrusting me or feeling morally superior now?"

"I didn't ... it wasn't personal! You could have been stolen from, or blackmailed ..."

"Kryptonite IS PERSONAL!" Lena snapped savagely. "That's what Alex said in Juru and you said and did _nothing_ to disagree. I asked point blank if you really believed I would harm you! You refused to answer that question and instead I get 'kryptonite is personal' and 'I'm a Luthor so it's not wise to give me Supergirl's identity'?! Supergirl couldn't trust ANY Luthor with kryptonite, even me! What made me different from anyone else who could get it, like Alex or J'onn or anyone with sufficient access to the DEO's resources, Winn, James, Nia, Brainy? Only my family! So much for 'you're not your family, Lena'! And in the next breath, you acted as if my being upset with Supergirl somehow meant I would want to kill her! Newsflash, Kara. People have said and written all sorts of unjust things against me. Did you see me threaten news media or other reporters? You think I couldn't have bought out other media organisations than Catco if I wanted to stop them? And throughout everything that's happened, no matter how unjust I thought you were, I never once tried to harm you. Detain you temporarily so you couldn't stop me, yes, but harm you just for the hell of it, no! I am not Lex and I have never been Lex! You were supposed to know that! You certainly parroted it out enough. But the moment I decide not to work with you, the possibility that I might have a goal completely separate from his never occurs to you. You concluded that because I wasn't with you, I had to be against you!"

"You admitted that Non Nocere was wrong ...," Kara tried to find some footing.

"I did. It was. And it was also stupid. But it was not ANYTHING to do with what _Lex_ wanted! I did trials. On a small scale. With consent! And when I realized from those trials that it was not an achievable or desirable goal I stopped MYSELF and put everything back to normal! I was never working with Lex _against you!_ Can you really not see the difference? For all you knew, I could have been working to stop world hunger instead of world violence."

"But you weren't .."Kara persisted weakly.

Lena inhaled. "I have _already_ conceded that my judgment was impaired - by you! How many times do we need to repeat that? The point _here_ is that you wanted to command me and when I would not be commanded you took that as active opposition. All I wanted at the time was for you leave me alone! So you know what? _Have_ your paranoia! You wanted complete and inalienable safety, even from me. Well, you have it. You are immeasurably stronger, you know everything about me, you have everyone ready to support you against me, you had the ability to get other people to detain, interrogate me, incarcerate me without recourse, and for all I know can still do worse, like what J'onn has done to Lex, all on a whim that everyone would support no matter how wrong you were. Fine. You have total and complete advantage over me. Now you even have moral superiority because of everything I've done, and didn't you just _revel_ in my grovelling for forgiveness! Well, I wish you joy of your victory. I will always be grateful and I will always help to save innocent people. I will always protect you so you can continue protecting them. But I won't feed your delusions that so unequal a relationship can be a friendship or that I can be friends with someone who acts out against me like a child when she feels threatened even when it's all in her own imagination, when that acting out means such serious danger to me. Oh wait," she rolled her eyes, "now that I've upset you, you'll go cry on Alex's shoulder and complain to her about me so I suppose I can expect her to wait for whenever Carol and Diana aren't around to come 'talk' to me. In her nice new suit. Fine then, come on, let's just order pizza and potstickers and watch movies and be 'friends' just like you want to be. You like comforting surface words and behaviour, after all, don't you? You never trouble yourself to look deeper."

Kara felt cold all over. These were whole new bitter accusations and yet ... Lena was relying on facts that had always been there. 

"Why ... why haven't you ever told me this? That you felt this way?"

Lena sighed again. "Because it was only after Leviathan that I had time to think and the mindspace to think clearly about it. And I was motivated to do it because I was discontented with the way you thought you had so little to apologise for when I had so much. I was motivated by your smugness at the end. It really rubbed me very much the wrong way."

"I ... I'm sorry ..." Kara began shakily.

"Don't," Lena warned. "The conditions between us don't _allow_ for a real friendship. Unless that changes, an apology really doesn't do anything for me except provide a moment of satisfaction that is all too fleeting. Just ... think about it. Whatever you resolve on, you can tell me about it once and for all after you've thought it through. I'm tired of going back and forth about this. And fortunately for you, you don't have to worry about not trusting me anymore because I am stepping down as CEO of Luthorcorp in a couple of weeks and I will be going away regularly with Carol and Diana to assist them with their future endeavours. I won't have time to plan anything evil against you during the intervals when I am home." She rolled her eyes again. (By now, Sam had agreed to take the CEO position with Jess, who had just finished business school, as her right hand. With Obsidian North scaled back to VR only for mental health, training and R&D in various disciplines and very controlled entertainment, Andrea was able to take a position on LutherCorp's board to help Sam outvote any pains in the asses left on the board: Obsidian North, Catco and LuthorCorp were not business rivals in any way so there was no conflict of interests for her.)

"I know you won't ..." Kara began.

"Bullshit," Lena interrupted without hesitation. "The fact that I _can_ will always be in the back of your mind. It's been there since Reign and I have since then reinforced the conviction several times." She looked away. "I don't blame you, you know. But as I said, you have always been able to kill me with the merest flick of a finger. You don't see _me_ setting up active defences against you and being distrustful that you'll hurt me all the time, do you? So no, we can't be friends, not when everything is so one-sided and you keep behaving like a paranoid child, obedient to Alex and to every whim you decide to indulge." 

There was a short, uncomfortable silence and Kara was just thinking of making a break for it so she could have a meltdown in private, when Lena began again. "I don't understand it. You're very smart. You're very capable and you come from a civilisation centuries in advance of Earth. I respect that you must have undergone great sorrows and hardships even though I don't know exactly what they are. But you also have many advantages as a person. You don't need to be dependent on anyone! Your cousin certainly isn't. And yet here you are, spending years at the beck and call of an undemocratic secret agency that held aliens without trial, that stole your ship, that had vast amounts of kryptonite, for god's sake, if I am to believe what I've been told about the destruction of the DEO. You look up to a cousin who is not as strong or as skilled as you. You are obedient to a sister whose influence you allow to edge into control. You operate by committee instead of simply taking advice and being the leader you could be. For God's sake, you subjected yourself to _Lex_ because Alex wouldn't leave the DEO after the Crisis! Why do you even need that sort of security and mollycoddling? Are you afraid that Alex will abandon you, not support or comfort you, if you take a leadership role? If your fears are true, what kind of a sister does that make her? You have the ability to earn loyalty everywhere so easily. Why can't you surround yourself with discriminating people who will support and comfort a leader instead of people who alternately lead you by the nose and then slavishly enable whatever whims you decide to follow? Why can't you get your friends to relate to you just a little differently? The answer is: you CAN. You just WON'T because for some reason you _like_ things this way. Or maybe it's just so easy."

"I'm NOT a leader!" Kara burst out. "I ... I never have been. It doesn't suit me. I've never wanted it."

"Okay, fine. It's not a bad thing. But are you also saying independence and maturity don't suit you either?"

Kara was silent. Her heart was resisting Lena's accusations mightily but her brain couldn't help listening. Between them, she couldn't form a rational counterargument on the fly.

"I appreciate having input from other people with different perspectives and fields of expertise and experience," Lena said. "That is what running a complex business often requires. Teams where every member brings something different to the table. I take all those different views and the information they bring, the slant they each have. Then I make the decision based on the what the end goal is, the greatest good, the least harm. Sometimes the end goal is greater profit, sometimes it's better conditions of living for a lot of people who could benefit from our products or endeavours, sometimes it's good publicity. It's a balancing act and I get that not every one likes to have to make decisions like that all the time. But I don't ever let my people think they can tell me what to do. I let them think that they need not hesitate to _advise_ me. At the end of day, I take the burden of responsibility for what LuthorCorp does so it has to be my decision. Who takes responsibility for what Supergirl and her friends do?"

"i guess Supergirl is the most visible, the most noticed," Kara admitted.

"Well, then ... if you do what J'onn tells you to do and it gets public criticism, does Supergirl bear that burden alone?"

"I suppose so," Kara said miserably. "I would hardly write an article placing blame on him. In the past I've done things which the public criticised. Sometimes it was deserved and sometimes it wasn't, but I've never tried to shift the blame."

"Well, you're stuck with the visibility. Or maybe you like it. That wouldn't be wrong. But if you allow other people to lead you in private and then you take the blame in public, you are not a leader, you are just their convenient little stalking horse." Lena shifted tiredly in her seat. "When people take responsibility for themselves, they are motivated to make damn sure they get it right. My people take the responsibility of giving me good advice because I pay them well for it and they don't want to lose that. How deeply do J'onn and Alex and Nia think through what they do? What they ask _you_ to do? Who took responsibility for the aliens you helped the DEO apprehend that were held without trial?"

She paused to let Kara ponder that. "You can't possibly believe that you can escape responsibility just because decisions are made by committee, because if you _do_ think that way, sooner or later you're going to feel burdened by something that originated from one of them which you didn't think through because it was easier just to think the way they laid it out to get you to agree, because it was easier to pick between the choices they gave you instead of coming up with another option all on your own that might suit you better but set you at odds with your friends. It's far too easy to swim with the tide, isn't it? But no true friend should hold it against you for making a decision that's right for _you_. And no true friend would let you carry the can for _their_ decisions. God, I wish you'd spend some time thinking about the relationship independence, teamwork and leadership have to each other!"

Silence descended again. Kara was feeling browbeaten and defeated. Lena was fed up.

Eventually she said, "I'm tired."

"All right, I guess that wasn't a subtle hint." Kara rose. "I'll go. I'll do what you said, think about everything. Thank you for taking the time to spell it all out."

"Thank you for respecting me enough to sit through it patiently. I'm ... not at my best so it was probably much more unpleasant to hear than it should have been."

Kara smiled shakily. "It would never have been easy to hear, Lena. I think you've been remarkably restrained, considering."

Lena waved that off. She looked genuinely like she was ready to drop so Kara left without further delay. It wasn't like she had anything to say that wasn't protestations Lena wasn't in any mood to entertain anyway. 

///

Using advanced tech from the _Triton_ , Carol tracked Supergirl when she flew from Lena's apartment right to Alex's. Just as she was concluding that Lena had been dead right in her prediction about that, Kara flew out again within five minutes. This time she headed northwards, further and further until her signal came to a stop somewhere in the Arctic Circle. She would stay there for several days.

///

The next day, Alex blew past Lena's assistant and stormed into Lena's office. The moment the door burst open and Lena recognised the invader, she hit one button under her desk that began recording video and audio and a second button that transmitted live feed to her Head Legal's tablet.

"What did you do to Kara?" Alex snarled, fists down on Lena's desk and looming over her.

"None of your business," Lena said. She thought it was a hell of a pity they weren't friends because the two of them had a lot in common but Alex had never really warmed up to her beyond surface cooperation and civility. She had never once apologised to her; acknowledged that she felt burned, yes, apologised, no. And that had certainly contributed to the bitterness that had led Lena's own poor conduct. Lena also had the disturbing sense that Alex's protectiveness of her sister masked unheathy repressions of possessiveness, envy and resentment to which Alex would never admit. That impression was bolstered by Alex's action suit. She could understand that without DEO field teams to support her, that suit was helpful. But Alex also had an fine brain. So why the suit instead of new computer systems and a lab when J'onn, M'gann and Nia were available to back Kara in the field? Lena would bet a lot that the choice had a lot to do with J'onn's instinct to mitigate any envy of alien powers on Alex's part. It made Lena sad. Alex was such a good person in so many respects. But Lena was not going to let herself be an easy target for Alex's too-ready propensity towards violence whenever she had what she thought was a legitimate excuse to let loose the bully in her. In Lena's opinion, that inner bully had been enabled far too much already by J'onn and Kara. "If Kara wanted you to know, she would have told you."

"She went up to the Fortress, said she had some research to do. Wanted to do it in peace, have alone time. But she was upset. VERY upset. And this was right after she went to see YOU!" Alex finished in a near shout. 

"I have no idea what she's doing," Lena said truthfully. "And you're trespassing. We have no business together and this is my place of business. Please leave."

"The HELL I will!" Alex was growing more heated. She reached out grab Lena's collar.

"STEP AWAY FROM MISS LUTHOR RIGHT NOW!" Her Head Legal's stentorian accents cut in from the open doorway.

Behind Alex, several members of LutherCorp Security fanned out to her rear left and right, guns trained on her. Hearing their soft, sure footsteps and the odd clicking of a safety catch here and there, Alex froze.

"Everything's been recorded since you entered," Lena said quietly, "You can still hurt me. You can turn your suit on and flee. Or you can turn and fight. Do any of those and the footage will be sent to NCPD. If I think it advisable, I will release it to the news media. You will be a fugitive from justice." And Alex had quite loudly mentioned Kara's name and the Fortress. Release of that footage would out Kara as Supergirl and Alex would have done it pretty much all on her own.

"You have committed trespass and an assault on Miss Luthor," her Head Legal announced. "I am enacting a citizen's arrest until NCPD get here and then _they_ can arrest you."

"I didn't touch her!" Alex ground out.

"You caused her reasonable apprehension of harm. That IS a complete assault even without physical contact," her Head Legal said clinically.

"Right now, everyone who's seen that footage," Lena went on, "is bound to silence by NDAs with LuthorCorp and with me personally. That will cease to be the case once the footage is seen by NCPD - or anyone else. Go quietly Alex, or I'm releasing it on the news with the next press of a button."

Alex's fists clenched. "What do you need to make this go away?" she gritted out with difficulty.

"Go quietly and I will give NCPD the portion of the footage that shows you entering and reaching for me and nothing in between. That will cover the trespass and the assault. If you plead guilty, they won't ask for the complete footage. If you contest the charges, they will and I will be bound to provide it. Be glad the DEO doesn't exist anymore because if it did, I wouldn't be giving you this option. I wouldn't let up until it was outed and you would have been the one who gave me the means to do so. Choose now."

Stewing mightily, Alex conceded defeat. She didn't want to reveal her action suit. She would have died rather than be the cause of the disclosure of Kara's identity.

Lena sent the complete footage to Kara's phone and then turned back to business. One more week before she let go of the CEO position.

///

Kara came to her three days later, impromptu. She waited for Lena's assistant to ask Lena if she could make time. Lena could and did.

"If you're here about Alex's sentence," Lena said, "I am not asking for damages or jail time. All I am asking for a restraining order - even though I am well aware that with the suit J'onn made her, she could mask her face and kill me and still escape. Think I'm overreacting now?"

"No," Kara said in a small voice. "I'm sorry, Lena."

"You've no need to be. You didn't tell her what was said between us. You're not responsible for what she chooses to do on her own initiative when you _haven't_ pointed her at me. However ..." her voice grew steely, " ... you DO have the ability to rein her in now. If I do end up mysteriously dead or injured at her hand after this, well, _I_ might not be able to hold you responsible. Will _you_?"

"Yes, "Kara said. "I'll talk to her."

"That's between the two of you," Lena shrugged. "It's entirely up to you to bear the consequences if your 'talk' isn't effective enough."

Kara bit her lip and nodded, but it was tentative. Lena could see she was in a terrible quandary. If Kara was too soft on Alex it might not actually be effective. If she was too hard, she risked her relationship with her sister. At this point, it wasn't Lena's problem. if Kara was going to continue her immature co-dependence with Alex, she would still be a child and Lena would be gone a lot and wouldn't have to put up with it. She was so absolutely done with living in fear of the uncertain temperament and changeability of Kara and her friends, especially since so far as she knew, they only got that way around _h_ _er_. 

"Oh, wait, I made this for you." Kara handed her a new tablet. Lena switched it on. There was no internet connection. 

"It's a stand alone," Kara said. "I've loaded information about Krypton on it. And a few video and audio files I made for you. I ... understand what you said about my way not being the only right way. That you can mean to do good even if you won't work with me. And I wanted to show you that I do trust you now, the way I maybe always should have. Also to correct the balance of power between us a bit."

Lena softened considerably as she considered this. She would not have been surprised if Kara had just thrown up her hands, given up trying to repair things between them and taken her friends' comfort and support. But Kara hadn't done that.

"You'll be gone next week, you said?" Kara's voice wavered. "Do you ... do you still want me to leave you alone?"

Lena shook her head slowly. "Before you came in, I was thinking that way. But you took my words to heart. You haven't given up on me. So I won't give up on you. I won't be gone very long and I'll be back every so often." Sam had moved back to National City with Ruby so this would stay as Lena's home base after all. "I won't connect this tablet to anything else and I'll rig a couple of self-destruct protocols so no one else can read it."

"I went to the Fortress to watch holos of Krypton. Festivals, other events," Kara offered, feeling encouraged. "I was learning how Kryptonian adults behave, figuring out what lay behind that behaviour. I'm going to be more observant of ordinary human adults around me too. I'm ... I'm going to try to grow up, Lena. I swear it. And maybe, as I do that, every time you come back you''ll see a difference. When I can see my way, I'll talk to the others about how I want them to be with me."

"I hope you're doing this for yourself, Kara, and not anyone else," Lena said, "because you could be so much more!"

They gazed at other peacefully and were even able to muster weak but real smiles.

"Oh, what's happened your pod, by the way?"

Kara brightened. "Oh! It wasn't destroyed with the DEO. I took it to the Fortress. It's still pretty much intact."

"I'm glad," Lena said sincerely. "You know, I'm going to work on myself too. Carol and Diana are good role models. In time, hopefully we'll both be better people."

"If they don't get you killed first," Kara muttered. 

"No, they're a lot like you in that respect," Lena's smile widened. "They're loyal and protective." Unlike Alex, they weren't smothering or controlling either, but Lena didn't want to take a retrograde step so she didn't say that.

Kara beamed. "So ... you'll call me when you get back? We'll see each other?"

"Every single time," Lena promised. 

///

Kara faithfully came to see her off. 

"Hey, no tears!" Lena nudged her. "I might only be gone a few days. We can't tell in advance. And I'm going to read what's on the tablet. Okay? I'm really happy to have it."

Kara leaned on her gently. "I'm gonna miss you and worry because I can't call you and you can't call me."

"Look at it this way. I'm not CEO of LutherCorp anymore. When I do come back, I won't be the busy bee I've always been. Sam's setting a lab aside just for me so all I'll be doing is R&D on whatever I want. We'll have as much time together as you can manage."

///

It took time of course. Kara more or less demanded that Alex go to therapy to mitigate her over-protective streak on pain of taking her new suit away and not working with her at all. Alex went. 

So did Lena when she was home. Under Carol and Diana's careful tutelage she became fitter and stronger and bit more agile. She no longer ran like a crippled chicken (Carol's phrase) - it never became a favoured pursuit but at least she looked somewhat natural and efficient when she did it. She made a personality for the _Triton's_ AI. Her first attempt resulted in a truly snotty voice and a personality to match, which Carol promptly named Asshole and from which she and Lena derived an unholy sort of enjoyment. Diana found it insufferable and threatened to tie her lasso round Lena's waist for the entire trip so she would be forced to speak the truth all the time if she did not immediately effect a change - _any_ change! So then they got a bland sort of news presenter personality while Lena gradually made more tweaks. By this time she had met the crew of the _Waverider_ because Kara had conscientiously tried to include her in all the best aspects of Supergirl's life she had missed out on before, so the final iteration was Gideon-like but female. They called her Ariadne for no reason other than that they all liked the sound of the name. Lena had many thrilling, ulcer-inducing and triumphant experiences with the _Triton._ Carol and Diana never withheld thanks when it was due and Lena appreciated their qualities and their adventures together thoroughly despite, or perhaps because of, the nailbiting moments. She learned a lot and became more stable and more secure.

In the end, Kara went to therapy too. 

It took time for the improvements to be palpable, but through it all Lena and Kara saw each other as much as they could when Lena was home. They discussed new things they had learned from their respective occupations and therapy. Alex, to her credit, took very little time to come to Lena with a fulsome apology which Lena decided was sincere, and took wicked delight in taking over Lena's training when Lena was home and Carol and Diana were elsewhere. Lena grouched and grumbled but she went through it, mocking and all, and was the better for it, though violence would never be her first choice.

Each time she came back, Kara added more material to the tablet. It was no longer just about Krypton and Kryptonians. There were more current video files which captured some stream of consciousness rambling by Kara, or entertainment like a recording of the game nights Lena had just missed or lunches with Nia and Sam and Jess or a couple of Supergirl's cuter animal rescues. It was ... nice. A comfortable taste of home before Lena went to bed on the ship.

Kara went lackadaisically on a few dates until Alex kicked her in the ass with relatively recently acquired Sapphic wisdom. Lena had a couple of trysts, more out of curiosity than anything else, with people she met while adventuring with Carol and Diana until _they_ kicked _her_ in the ass, having seen how Kara and Lena were together now that they were back on good terms again.

///

"Lena?" Kara was a lot more confident now, almost eighteen months after Lena had started regularly going off with Carol and Diana. She hardly ever stuttered or stammered anymore but this was Lena and she was nervous. She tried to remind herself of Alex and Nia's encouraging opinions of how Lena would react - J'onn had refused to help and asked her only if she wanted to live her entire life, until she or Lena _died_ (gross!), never knowing what might be, and muttered a reminder that 'faint heart never won fair lady' - but in fact her mind was panicking and blank.

"Hmmm ...?" Lena blinked up at her, turning away from the television.

"You're not seeing anyone, are you? I mean, you'd tell me if you were?"

"Of course." Lena went silent as she deliberated on whether she had the courage to do what Carol and Diana had urged. 

Before she could make up her mind, Kara spoke tremulously. "Have you ever ... um ... thought about ... um ... women ... _that_ way?" 

Lena went hot, then cold. This _mattered_ in a way no date or tryst ever had. 

Kelly's steadying influence had compounded the beneficial effects of Alex's therapy. The sisters still had sister nights and talked a lot but their lives were now distinctly separate. One sister night, Lena had been around to have dinner with Kelly, who had thanked her for being the motivation behind Kara putting her foot down with Alex. Prior to that, Kelly had thought it was up to her to reconcile herself to the fact that Alex would put Kara above Kelly and any children they might have. It was a lousy pill to swallow and Kelly, being of the opinion that she deserved better, had felt pathetic and needy and _less_ for wanting Alex despite that. But now she no longer felt second best and had no qualms about considering a permanent relationship with Alex. Nowadays, Kara talked as much about her colleagues old and new, about J'onn and Nia and Sam and Jess, as she did about Alex. It seemed to Lena a lot healthier. With all the catching up she had been able to do with the tablet and with Kara in person, she felt better informed about Kara. If anything, these days Kara tended to overshare: Lena really did not need to know _exactly_ how many potstickers Kara had eaten the previous night. Lena had heard about claustrophobia, and panic attacks and red kryptonite and Aunt Astra and Uncle Non. They'd spent an entire night on Kara losing Argo City and her mother a second time. With the DEO gone and Carol and Diana levelheadedly looking out for her, Lena now discovered that she had stopped feeling disadvantaged relative to Kara.

"Yes ... I have before. In my later school years, at college. I mean, I don't do it by default or anything. It's just ... it's not that common for me to feel an attraction so it doesn't really matter to me what reproductive organs the person I'm attracted to has ..." Lena said slowly.

Kara licked her lips and squirmed. "So ... do you feel that attraction to anyone now?" 

They stared at each other. The space between them decreased slowly though neither was really aware of moving. 

Lena swallowed. "I think ... maybe you already know I do."

"Yeah?" Kara breathed, and licked her lips again. "Anyone I know?"

"Are you really going to be coy now?" Lena's brows began to draw together and she drew back a fraction.

"Hell no!" Kara ejaculated hurriedly and closed the distance before Lena could change her mind.

**FIN**


End file.
